Wednesday, September 29, 2010

AOL Tries to Restore Clout With Three Acquisitions in One Day - BusinessWeek

Maybe AOL now stands for “Abandon Our Legacy”

Armstrong, who took over AOL last year and spun it off from Time Warner Inc., is trying to revive growth after paring down the business. He sold off the social network Bebo and the instant-messaging service ICQ because they failed to attract enough users. Even during yesterday’s acquisition spree, AOL announced plans to close another of its sites, the news aggregator Propeller.com.

“Tim Armstrong and his new team are making decisions to shape the next generation of AOL in content and social media, and it bodes well for the company,” Ron Conway, a Silicon Valley investor who founded SV Angel, said in an e-mail.